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Pakistan increasing nuclear warheads, warns US

Washington: The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, has confirmed reports that Pakistan is increasing its nuclear weapons programme, but has provided no details.The confirmation came during a Senate Armed Services committee hearing Thursday when Democrat senator Jim Webb, an expert on defence issues, raised fears that Pakistan is adding to the nuclear weapons it traditionally has pointed toward India, and questioned whether US aid could be funding it.

Noting reports that Pakistan “may be actually adding on their weapon systems and warheads” Webb asked: “Do you have any evidence of that?” “Yes,” Mullen answered.

Webb said that is a cause for “enormous concern,” because with the Islamic militant threat, he said, Pakistan’s government is not very stable.

The US has urged Pakistan to focus on the Islamic extremist threat instead of India. But Mullen told senators that it’s still unclear that Pakistani leaders can shift their focus for a long period even as they slowly acknowledge that militants pose more of a security risk.

“Historically, they haven’t done that,” Mullen said. “So right now, I’m encouraged by what’s happened, but I certainly withhold any judgment about where it goes because of the historic lack of sustainment, and they know they need to do that.”

Also at the hearing, Admiral Mullen said it is not only Pakistan’s top leaders who need to recognise the militant threat.

He said Pakistan’s powerful intelligence service, the ISI, must also change its approach, and one key to that is convincing its leaders there will be a long-term US commitment to helping them defeat the Islamic militants.

“The ISI in the long run has to change its strategic thrust and get away from working both sides,” he said. “That’s how they have been raised, certainly over the last couple of decades, and that’s what they [are going to continue to] believe, until they think we’re going to be there for a while.”
Asked by Senator John McCain, Republican presidential opponent of Barack Obama, whether he still worried “about the ISI cooperating with Taliban?”, Mullen simply said: “Yes, sir.”

Several senators voiced doubts about sending millions of dollars to Pakistan without assurances it will be spent to fight extremists who threaten security and political stability both there and in Afghanistan.

Next year’s Pentagon budget includes $700 million to train and otherwise help Pakistan fight Islamic Terroists.

As Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari huddled with President Barack Hussein Obama at the White House last week, Taliban jihadis extended their inexorable advance into Pakistani territory. General David Petraeus was quoted as warning that Pakistan could be mere weeks from falling to their onslaught.

What nobody seems willing to say out loud, however, is that Pakistan was created to be an Islamic state governed by Shari’a and dedicated to the objectives of jihad. Its 20-year quest for the first Islamic bomb ended in success largely because the U.S. and rest of the Western world allowed it to happen. Three decades of American administrations enabled Pakistan to arm itself, train thousands of youngsters to terrorism, and then export those weapons, jihadis, and ideology to its neighbors. That the forces of Islamic jihad should now be mounting what may be a final assault for domination of the nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Pakistan should surprise no one.

Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, the 20th century founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami (the Islamic Congregation), urged his followers to “seize power by the use of all available means and equipment” in order to establish Islamic rule and instill an “Islamic way of life and morality” — in other words, impose Shari’a on Pakistan. Neither did Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Father of modern-day Pakistan, leave any doubt about what was intended when he addressed the All-India Muslim League in 1946: “If we fail to realise our duty today, you will be reduced to the status of Sudras (low castes) and Islam will be vanquished from India. I shall never allow Muslims to be slaves of Hindus.”Born the following year in a bloodbath of religious hatred, Pakistan has always been ruled by its army and intelligence service, which enjoyed the virtually automatic support of its ally in Washington for the next 60 years even as they increasingly identified with hardline Islamists. Today, that army and its Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are so thoroughly infused with jihadist sympathies that their will to win against Muslim co-religionists is in serious question. The U.S. seemed not to notice when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto made Islam the state religion of Pakistan in 1973 or when his successor General Zia ul-Haq Islamicized Pakistani courts and the economy, turned Pakistani madrassas into jihad factories, and demoted women to second-class status. Neither did the Pentagon pay the slightest attention when Brigadier S.K. Malik wrote “The Qur’anic Concept of War” in 1979, revealing Pakistan’s unswerving dedication to the doctrinal aspects of Qur’anic warfare (jihad). Malik stated unequivocally, “Jihad is a continuous and never-ending struggle waged on all fronts including political, economic, social, psychological, domestic, moral and spiritual to attain the object of policy. It aims at attaining the overall mission assigned to the Islamic state…” Gen. Zia ul-Haq wrote the forward to Malik’s book — which to this day is virtually unknown at U.S. national war colleges. Because the U.S. needed Pakistan to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, our government turned a blind eye not only to Zia’s Islamicization of Pakistani society, but also to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. As meticulously documented in the 2007 book, “Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons”, three decades of American presidents ignored, destroyed, and misrepresented to Congress and the American people the evidence provided by U.S. and other Western intelligence services about the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan. Pakistan’s nuclear intentions and developing capabilities were known and understood by every president from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush as was the fact that Pakistan’s military-dominated governments were deeply involved in AQ Khan’s activities. Then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto herself acceded to AQ Khan’s request to travel to North Korea in December 1995. There she took delivery of a bagful of computer disks and other materials containing the blueprints for the advanced ballistic missiles Pakistan needed for its nuclear weapons delivery system. Husain Haqqani, the current Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S., reportedly met Bhutto at the Islamabad airport upon her return and later described his horror at the realization that what she had brought back was a direct delivery from Pyongyang to the Pakistani military. After a decade of disastrous disinterest, 9/11 renewed U.S. attention to Pakistan, but the ISI’s continuing deep involvement with its creation, the Afghan Taliban, was somehow overlooked. Confident of ISI support and drawing on an apparently endless supply of Pakistani madrassa graduates, the Taliban methodically established an intelligence, support, and training network throughout Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and beyond. Despite the veneer of its Westernized elite, Pakistan is home to millions of Muslims who know exactly what liberal democracy is and firmly reject it. It’s these decades of failure to deal with an ostensible ally that proliferated both jihad and centrifuges that have brought us to today’s panic over the Taliban’s 2009 blitzkrieg through the SWAT Valley. Failure to absorb the lessons of Malik’s “Quranic Concept of War” and ignorance of Islamic history are the only possible explanations for any expectations that the Taliban would abide by the Malakand Accord, the agreement reached in February 2009 between the jihadis and the Pakistani government that ceded the SWAT Valley to Shari’a. Now observers are trying to come to grips with the possibility that the center of gravity for the international jihad, this nuclear-armed country of 170 million people that harbors al-Qa’eda and Taliban leaders, provides safe havens for terrorist training camps, and runs operations centers for jihadist attacks across the globe, could soon become the nucleus of a new Caliphate. This bad dream becomes a real nightmare when a nuclear Iran run by jihadi-minded mullahs is factored in. Usama bin-Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their al-Qa’eda cohorts are in Iran and Pakistan because they feel safe there. They didn’t bring the ideology of Islamic Jihad with them — the ideology welcomed them. It’s not likely that the Taliban will long be halted by Pakistan’s half-hearted counteroffensive. It is the nature and the imperative of jihad to expand “till Allah’s word is supreme” (Q 8:39) or until it is halted by force. U.S. aid to Pakistan this year is no more likely to result in a redeployment of Pakistan’s military away from the Indian border or a housecleaning at the ISI than the billions already spent were. While Ralph Peters’ recent call to “Dump Pakistan” is probably unrealistic, his bottom line to “Let India deal with Pakistan” does not make sense. Much more sense than continuing to aid and abet the forces of terror by writing blank checks to a regime with no accountability, whose real interests are antithetical to America’s own.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday the government had abdicated to the Taliban by agreeing to the Swat deal, adding the country now posed a “mortal threat” to the world.

The US must strip Pakistan of its nuclear weapons, destroy their nuclear laboratories and detain Dr. A.Q. Khan. $11-billion of US taxpayers’ money, since 9/11, and barely anything of significant value from that Dane Geld, so no likelihood of $5-billion more having an impact vis-à-vis Saudi Arabian billions to enable radical-Islamic activity in Pakistan. Zardari, et al, reckon on playing the US for fools. Hardly surprising when North Korea, Somali pirates and Iran proceed with impunity.

Without the $5-billion from the US, Pakistan is toast, and when the Taliban gain power in Pakistan, there will be no shortage of Pakistanis clamoring to gain access to the EU and the US. Which is partly why there will be 11 Pakistani students getting their UK student visas revoked, and returned to Pakistan.

Chief of Taliban has links with Pakistan’s Intelligence (ISI)

Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of Pakistani Taliban, who claimed credit for the recent deadly attack on a police academy near Lahore, has links with the country’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), and insider inside the Pakistani Intel revels on the condition of anonymity.

Within days of the government’s announcement of the imposition of Islamic Sharia law in Swat, 125 km (80 miles) northwest of Islamabad, Taliban militants forced their way into nearby Buner, closer to the capital Islamabad. They said their aim was to push their harsh version of Islam across the country.

“Investors are scared about the Taliban issue and the fear of more violence,” said Tauseef Ladak, a dealer at Taurus Securities Ltd.

Residents said the Taliban had occupied police stations in Buner and that gun-totting fighters were roaming market places urging people to support their efforts to impose Islamic law.

Politicians who pushed the government to enforce Sharia law in Swat have even begun expressing worries about the growing clout of the Taliban.

“If the Taliban continue their advances at the current pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad,” Fazl-ur-Rehman, head of the Jamiat-e-ulema-e-Islam, the country’s largest Islamic party, told parliament on Wednesday.

Washington: The Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, according to the New York Times.

This was so “despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, according to American government officials”, the influential US daily said.

The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Islamic Taliban commanders who are gearing up to confront the international force in Afghanistan that will soon include some 17,000 American reinforcements.

Support for the Islamic terror group Taliban, as well as other Islamic militant groups, is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Times said citing unnamed officials.

There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Islamic Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections, it said.

The Times said details of the ISI’s continuing ties to militant groups were described by a half-dozen American, Pakistani and other security officials during recent interviews in Washington and Islamabad.

The American officials were cited as saying proof of the ties between the Taliban and Pakistani spies came from electronic surveillance and trusted informants.

The Pakistani officials interviewed said they had firsthand knowledge of the connections, though they denied that the ties were strengthening the insurgency, the Times said.

American officials have complained for more than a year about the ISI’s support to groups like the Taliban.

“But the new details reveal that the Pakistani spy agency is aiding a broader array of militant networks with more diverse types of support than was previously known – even months after Pakistani officials said that the days of the ISI’ s playing a ‘double game’ had ended,” the Times said.

The Big question though remains why Obama administration is agreeing to give away more tax payers billions to a terrorist nation like Pakistan with out any strong strings, while people in America can’t even afford their own health care.

Poland has joined the ranks of countries accusing Pakistan of inaction, if not outright complicity in terrorist activity, following the beheading last week of a Polish national by the Pakistani Taliban.
In a furious response that has stunned the international diplomatic community, Polish justice minister Andrzej Czuma on Monday blamed Pakistan’s ”apathy” in tackling Islamic terrorism for the killing of a Polish geologist who was kidnapped by the Pakistani Taliban from Attock town in Punjab.

“The structure of the Pakistani government is behind this apathy. The Pakistani authorities encourage these Islamic terrorists,” Czuma told a Polish news agency, even as the horrific killing recalled the similar beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

The minister’s outburst stunned his own colleagues in the diplomatic circuit who are a little more circumspect in public about Pakistan’s reputation as a haven of terrorism. ”It was unnecessary honesty, it sent shivers down my spine when I heard Minister Czuma speaking,” Pawe? Gra?, a member of the Polish parliament’s Special Services Committee and Czuma’s party colleague told the Polish media.

However, so great is the outrage in Warsaw over the brutal killing that the Poland’s Senate speaker has called off a visit by his Pakistani counterpart this week.

Speaker Bogdan Borusewicz said Tuesday his decision is not an unfriendly gesture toward Pakistan but was made after taking into consideration ”the situation in which our countryman was murdered.” Other European countries also expressed revulsion at yet another beheading in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, according to reports in the Polish media, the State Prosecutor’s Office in Cracow, formally investigating the incident, would like to secure the original tapes containing a seven-minute film showing the Pole’s execution. For now, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, it has only received a digital copy.

“We don’t want a digital copy because it may have been tinkered with,” said Prosecutor Marek Wełna at the Organised Crime Bureau, State Prosecutor’s Office in Cracow. He said the persons who had taken part in the negotiations would be asked to testify. It is also possible a Polish prosecutor will go to Pakistan to secure potential evidence there.

The Polish case offers Pakistan yet another opportunity to prove its bona fides in the war on terror amid continuing questions in the international community about its seriousness. Whether it is the Mumbai carnage or the London subway blasts or the beheading of Pearl and now of Piotr Stanczack, Pakistan has not distinguished itself with its dodgy investigations seemingly aimed more at protecting the perpetrators rather than bring them to justice.

Many of the accused in such incidents, including Omar Saeed Sheikh, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, Yusuf Muzammil, and Zarrar Khan are reported to be ISI assets who live under the Pakistani intelligence agency’s protection, while Pakistan’s civilian dispensation drums up red herrings while privately pleading it is not fully in control of the agency or that it has been infiltrated by rogue elements.

With its constant denials, fudging and prevarication, Pakistan’s government has laid itself open that it is complicit in such acts of terrorism. There is immense distrust among the U.S and its allies about Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI and how far it is in cahoots with the jihadis it fostered for long.